16 September 2006

More on Monklands

Well, we have the first sign of backlash: Julie McAnulty is to contest the Coatbridge & Chryston seat as an Independent.

This is Elaine Smith's seat currently, and she has a majority of 8,571 over the SNP, having polled 13,422 votes in 2003 versus the SNP's 4,851. If McAnulty can replicate Jean Turner's performance in Strathkelvin & Bearsden in 2003, she could take up to half Labour's vote, so unless we get a wave of candidates all campaigning to save Monklands, then we could now be in for a tight three-way race, as opposed to the Labour walkover we could otherwise have expected.

1 comment:

Will said...

In the event that people are still checking this post, you will have noticed that the number of comments has dropped from five to one.

The reason is as follows: I have received a complaint from a reader raising concerns of offence caused, statements that could be described as defammatory and potential personal safety issues. Given the concerns raised, I felt I had to act in response. As all the other comments related to the relevant comments, they have to go as well. I have saved all of them onto my hard drive.

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This does not set a precedent: my current security settings are reasonably liberal, with only the confirmation box used to confirm that posters are human and not spambots. That is how I hope to keep things but if there are more problems in the future I may have to revise the situation.

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